Le Pen’s victory and his two lessons: French equivalent of America’s Pat Buchanan

The April 21 French presidential elections bring encouraging news for the Nationalist Right. Jean-Marie Le Pen, head of the National Front, garnered over 17% of the vote, forcing the Socialist candidate Lionel Jospin, who won 16% of the vote, to retire from politics. Le Pen will now face off against the incumbent, moderate-conservative President Jacques Chirac, who received 20% of the vote, in an upcoming run-off election.

“I’ll tell you why they vote for me: Because there is unemployment, crime; because too many foreigners live in France and make us feel like strangers in our own house. People are scared for themselves and for their children.”

Le Pen is the French equivalent of America’s Patrick Buchanan, who voices similar concerns about America’s future in The Death of the West, his latest—and best—book. The “mainstream” media has alternately silenced and smeared both Le Pen and Buchanan. The controlled media affixes the usual array of empty buzzwords and scare terms to Le Pen, including “racist,” “fascist,” “anti-Semite,” “xenophobe,” “intolerant,” and so on. Astute observers know that if the media casts someone as the Devil incarnate, then they must be doing something right.

Indeed, the leaders of the West’s Nationalist Right, including Buchanan, Le Pen, Austria’s Joerg Haider, and Holland’s Pim Fortuyn, are “fighting the future,” resisting the socialist-egalitarian program of the New World Order. Their struggle to preserve the West is quintessentially noble and patriotic.

The Nationalist Right in America can learn two lessons from Le Pen’s victory. Stephens, a hostile journalist, ironically sums up these lessons in his Jerusalem Post article. He notes that

“The leader of France’s National Front party has, over the course of four successive presidential elections, stood for exactly the same things, with no attempt to moderate his views or soften his tone. Over the same time, the breadth of his political appeal has also remained the same: between 15 percent and 20% of the electorate.”

The first lesson is that we should always present a “banner of bold colors, not pale pastels.” The second is that the core electoral support for the Nationalist Right will usually hover between five and thirty percent in Western “democracies” during times of relative economic and political stability.

First Lesson: Radicals Uphold Standards and Set Examples

Le Pen’s message is stronger and more viable because it is the direct, blunt truth. Radicals occupy a valued place: they keep things honest, and they keep us aware—sometimes painfully so—of the ideals that we should be striving for, even as we recognize that reality often falls short of those ideals. Too often, the allure of some on the Right who seek an easy road to power, compromising with the System via political maneuvering and “finesse,” pull the teeth out of the agenda that they presumably seek to advance, preventing real rightward political change. Le Pen’s style, which the “mainstream” calls “extreme,” is a virtue. It’s about holding the line, delineating clear standards, and maintaining integrity.

People who warn about “appearing too radical” so as to avoid scaring off uninformed voters don’t realize that politics change over time and that people can be educated and convinced—by events, if not words. Right now, as Jared Taylor once said, the true American Right is “minoritarian.” However, this is neither permanent nor inevitable. If America can leap from George Washington to Bill Clinton, surely we can swing that same pendulum back. Part of the solution lies in refusing to accept the Left’s claim to the moral high ground. Why fear words like “racist” or “radical,” for example? The liberals are the “radical” ones in the whole context of American history—most Americans before the 1960s proudly expressed the same views that men like Buchanan or Le Pen do today. The liberals are also the true “racists” since their planned New World Order endangers true racial diversity by imposing forced integration and homogenization on all peoples and cultures the world over.

As time goes on, and the bitter fruit of liberalism continues to ripen in America, more Americans will become receptive to ideas that now seem “radical.” The media, for example, will not always command the authority it does now with the public. This leads us to Le Pen’s second lesson.

Second Lesson: Quality Counts, Not Numbers

Majorities do not determine truth, nor do wishes, feelings, or emotions alter reality. In the end, what people “think” or “feel” about anything, moderate or radical, is irrelevant. Reality is the final arbiter, not people’s “sensitivities.” Liberalism just does not work—its cousin failed in the Soviet Union between 1989-91 and it will fail here in the United States as well. Total societal degradation and collapse can be the only long-term outcome of socialist policies. If we didn’t think liberalism was incompatible with reality, we’d be liberals. There is only oneright answer, and the Right has it. Even if no one in America ever agrees with the Right, liberalism will still fail and the truth will out.

Majorities also do not generate political change. The Nationalist Right quite possibly may never amount to more than a few percent of the population in Western countries. This is fine, since the Left’s “core” is also only a small elite. Most Americans are sheep, and 90% of them will sit on the sidelines. They always have and they always will. Most people don’t really think about the society they live in, but sort of “go along” and accept whatever the elites, or their peers, or whatever looks fashionable on the tube present to them as reality. It is quite a maddening phenomenon. Fortunately, the Right’s vanguard minority will ultimately prevail because we are of higher quality than the Left’s rag-tag, affirmative action ridden team.

Think my analysis is wrong? How long do you think that the thin, green band of Federal Reserve Notes now keeping things in place can hold off America’s upcoming reality check? What do you think will happen when that band breaks?

The Purpose of Our Political Tactics

The so-called leadership of this country has made serious errors, many deliberately and many unconsciously, and soon we will all have to face the consequences. Our elites put into place policies that will eventually damage themselves as much as they are damaging us regular Americans. Once the Left flubs up, and they will because they have to by definition, we will seize control of these institutions and promote our images and messages, at which time the American people will then agree with us, because we will then be “fashionable.” We are an elite-in-waiting, as Sam Francis suggests in Beautiful Losers, and our strategy is necessarily a counterrevolutionary and insurgent one.

We dissidents do not currently have the power to change the direction of the country. We are forced to “ride it out” and see what we can salvage when this ship hits the rocks as a result of years of the Left and friends manning the helm. Right now, judging from the support given Gore and Nader in the 2000 presidential election, the American people lean moderate-left largely by inertia. Supporting Gore and Nader is the “fashionable” thing to do in the eyes of their peers. The media reinforces that image, along with the schools and other cultural institutions.

The purpose of our political agitation is not to convince a majority of the American people that we are right, because we can’t do that as long as the news and entertainment media remain outside our control. Our task is to galvanize that thinking 5% and keep the flame of the Old Faith alive, so that they will know what to do and be able to do it effectively when the time comes. This means showing the American people the intellectual currents that have been hidden from them, reminding them of the way things used to be before the Left came to power. We must pull things out of the Orwellian “memory hole,” and make Americans aware of their true history, not the Left’s version of it.

Our role now is one of aggressive, confrontational opposition– to act as gadflies, haunting and pestering the Left, starting a lot of “little fires” for them to have to put out, reminding the Left that they will never achieve the total “cultural hegemony” they desire. The Left may have taken our world from us, but at least we can deny them their world while we prepare for the day of restoration.

From Stop to Go: The Situation of the Right

In an ideal world, we would never wish negative things, like an economic collapse, on our own country and people, but we are realistically appraising the situation and predicting where trends will lead. Some may misinterpret these comments as a lack of patriotism, or accuse me of being an “America Hater.” It is my hope that they will see under the surface, at what we are really diagnosing here. I hope that those who feel a loyalty to the more permanent things will come to see the true, dire situation we face.

Years ago, the “mainstream” conservative Bill Buckley created the National Review with the stated purpose of “stand[ing] athwart history, yelling ‘Stop!” In the early days of that magazine, its writers defended the White Southerner’s approach to racial relations. Nevertheless, over time, conservatism caved, and then morphed into Liberalism Lite—rendered useless to Americans who had looked to it for their inspiration and their defense.

Today, it’s too late to yell “Stop!,” which is why we seem to be paradoxically yelling “Go!” here. The true Right must now stand athwart history, yelling, “We told you so! Move aside and let us clean up the mess you made.”

Paul Fallavollita

Paul Fallavollita holds an M.A. in political science from Purdue University in West Lafayette, Indiana. Paul is a regular columnist for Ether Zone.
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